Featured: Violence inside the walls of America’s hospitals
By Tim Johnsen, FACHE
[Warning: I open this article on the issue of violence in the healthcare setting with a true story of workplace assault that occurred in one of the hospitals that I served as COO. Please feel free to scroll down to the section entitled “An Epidemic of Violence” to read the rest of the article without reading the details of the story.]
It was a busy day like any other in one of my health system’s emergency rooms. An adult male patient in his mid-30s came in with abdominal pain that appeared severe. He exhibited no unusual behavior in the triage process other than seeming “intense,” which the triage nurse attributed to his apparent pain. After triage, he was placed in a room with glass doors and walls and a privacy curtain.